Comment: Azis Shekhani poses an interesting question that has crossed the minds of many in Finland: Should immigrants establish their own political party?
Shekhani argues that since immigrants have not succeeded at getting MPs elected on the ticket of traditional political parties and have taken part in the political process in good faith, a good way to change matters would be to form a political party made up immigrants and Finns.
With the municipal elections taking place next year, one way of running for office would be without the backing of any political party. It could be a good way to protest against the present situation and the hostile climate.
What do you think?
__________
Azis Shekhani
Maahanmuuttajat ovat osa suomalaista yhteiskuntaa. Heidän määränsä on kasvamassa, toinen sukupolvi on varttumassa. Heidän tulevaisuutensa ja paikkansa suomalaisessa yhteiskunnassa on kiinni kantaväestön asenteesta ja antamista mahdollisuuksista. Valitettavasti maahanmuuttajia on laman ja vaalien aikana arvosteltu, ja median ja puolueiden mielipiteet Suomeen muuttaneista eivät ole olleet myönteisiä.
So, what is stopping the immigrants establishing their own political party? However, I think immigrants have better possibility to get in the government if they are joining to the bigger parties. There are quite many small parties which have been failing (muutos 2011, piraattipuolue etc.)
Immigrants are just people with one relatively minor detail in common. To suggest that this is a basis for forming a political party is to invite fairly obvious ridicule. There are more population groups sharing one detail than there are people in Finland. The largest and most obvious ones include:
Men
Women
People born on Tuesdays
People with brown eyes
People who prefer strawberry ice cream to raspberry ice cream
People who prefer raspberry ice cream to strawberry ice cream
The overwhelming majority of decisions made by elected politicians have nothing whatsoever to do in particular with individuals who were born in another country, as opposed to those who were born in Finland. How should immigrants view issues such as the devolution of central government functions to provincial offices? What is the immigrant position on radiation safety in nuclear power plants? Which way should immigrants vote on the question of whether zoning plans should constitute sufficient grounds for granting permission to build wind farms?
JD
Would you add ‘People speaking Swedish’ to your list?
Also, ‘men’ was an unspoken badge of membership for many political parties in days gone by, and still is in terms of the leadership of some parties.
Personally, I think a political party must form around a common coherant political ideology that reflects a deep analysis of the economic, social, judicial and security needs of society and sets out a key and fundamental set of political values upon with to build political decision-making. I cannot see why that political philosophy could evolve out of a group identity that is based on such an arbitrary division of people as ‘foreign-origin’.
The label of ‘immigrant’ is already potentially very divisive. The problem with it as a label is that IT IS so arbirtrary. It’s almost like say the label has all the essential meaning that many have tried to claim, – that immigrants ‘belong’ to an invading army. A political party would likely undermine immigrants political voice, because it would also play into the hands of PS. Can you imagine, they would quickly say that immigrants are ‘trying to take over’. 🙂
I definitely want to see immigrants having a political voice, meaning that they (immigrant organisations) should be in dialogue with policy makers and decision-makers at all levels of governance about protecting the basic civil rights of immigrants and empowering them to participate fully economically and socially. They need this because they are an arbitrary group with nevertheless special needs and also a group that can be discriminated against, again, albeit because of memberships of that arbitrary group.
Mark
Of course.
Anyway, Finland was uninhabited when the country was entirely covered by glaciers a mile thick. We are all immigrants in the extended sense, so everyone would be equally qualified to join and support an immigrant political party.
JD
I think that is not very smart reasoning. To me there cannot be immigrants in the modern sense before there were states and borders. There has to be some official border-crossing taking place, some change of the political unit.
There was migration before there were states, of course, but there are different words to describe that. People were, not only but mostly, moving to territories that were previously uninhabitated, not controlled by anyone.
If we are all immigrants then the word immigrant does not mean anything anymore. We need terminology to describe and talk about the modern phenomenon. To me an immigrant is an individual who has a personal history of migration – he was born outside the country where he is residing.
But you are right about one thing. People have always been moving from place to place. There’s nothing strange or new about it. And I don’t see any reason why we should now try to put a stop to that phenomenon.
“People have always been moving from place to place. There’s nothing strange or new about it. And I don’t see any reason why we should now try to put a stop to that phenomenon.”
People have always been stopping people to moving place to place. And i dont see any reason to stop why we should now try to put a stop to that phenomenon.
Hannu
Trolls have always been manipulating the words of others without even attempting to understand the meaning of those words. And I don’t see any reason why we should start listening to them when they contribute nothing of value to a debate.
Justicedemon, from ages ago people have been killing anyone possibly hostile who have come in their area, do you disagree?
Hannu, that “hostility” you speak of continues to threaten people even if they were Finnish, have a Finnish parent and are multicultural Finns. It’s like when a Suomen Sisu MP starts to bash a certain group of immigrants. That hostility splashes over like blood on the whole community and society. Think that still there are children who have a Russian parent(s) and grew up in Finland but have to hide their other identity because some children won’t accept them. I think that is a pretty sad case. As a society we must address that forcefully.
– “Think that still there are children who have a Russian parent(s) and grew up in Finland but have to hide their other identity because some children won’t accept them.”
Yes, this is the number one problem. This we have to change and I believe that we can do it. As a society we really have to become more inclusive and show acceptance towards different backgrounds. These are people are born in Finland, most of them speak Finnish like it’s their native tongue and feel that Finnish culture is closest to them. The fact that they might have a different hair colour or a different home language should not matter at all.
Everyone should have the right to cherish all the different elements of their background.
I really hope that people will realise this and I think most of them will, eventually.
Aziz Sheikhani http://www.azizsheikhani.com/ is got a bad case of sour grapes. He was on the Green party ticket and got a whopping 364 votes. What is wrong then – “racism” of course, nothing to do with himself. Ratkaisut työttömyyden hoitoon. Työpaikat kaikille ja erityisesti koulutetuille nuorille.
A solution for unemployment is to employ everyone? O rly?